A reader objected recently to my comment that Democrats were responsible for the lynching of black and white Republicans during the 19th and 20th centuries. Sounding a little like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he demanded academic proof.

Although one essay cannot adequately present proof, these books, this movie, and this Civil War series contain plenty of resources for further study.

Like my antagonist and many other Americans, public schools taught me that white people had enslaved blacks and that their progeny were entitled to relief. I didn’t question this, although it didn’t square with my ancestors who fought to end slavery 150 years ago. If whites were guilty, why did two million of them interrupt their lives to fight the bloodiest war in American history to free slaves owned by Southern Democrats? If this was a white-against-black thing, why did whites fight the Civil War against other whites?

The answer is that the Civil War wasn’t between whites and blacks, but between Republicans who wanted to end slavery, and Democrats who did not. And as ugly as the Democratic Party’s roots and legacy of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and Disenfranchisement is, why does the party still exist today?

The first clue of this information blackout comes directly from Democrats. Although the Republican Party proudly discloses their Abolitionist roots on their website, the Democratic Party (DNC) website ignores their slavery agenda, excluding the entire period between 1848 and the 20th Century. Instead, the DNC boasts the “longest running political organization in the world”, the “Democratic cause” (slavery) and their dominance in urban (e.g., black) politics — as if Democrats had nothing to do with the brutality used to round up blacks.

This is a synopsis of what the DNC website missed.

Failed Reconstruction

This geographical representation contains pre-war information on free states and slave states. The Civil War began when Democrats wanted to spread slavery west and the Republican Party wanted to end it. Five years later, 360,000 Yankees (e.g., Republicans) had died in the struggle to free slaves from Democrat slaveholders.

Democrats weren’t happy with Reconstruction (1865-1877), especially when the Radical Republicans (including former slaves) began to supervise reforms.

Imagine how former slaveholders felt about being supervised by Yankees and black Republicans. These Democrats quickly adopted Jim Crow laws and formed the Ku Klux Klan – a group that “only used force when the forces of the Radical Republicans gave them no other choice.” (With these enforcement tools, its not hard to imagine how Democrats controlled 98 percent of the vote in the South by 1944.)

Former slaves like Congressman John Lynch and Senator Blanche Bruce were both Republican, as were all 23 blacks who entered Congress after the Civil War. Thirteen were ex-slaves. Mississippi’s history illustrates the political ascendancy of blacks from 1865 until 1890, when Democrats used fraud, violence, and intimidation to pass a new state constitution that undid all of the Republican reforms gained during Reconstruction.

Blacks weren’t welcomed into the Democratic Party until 1935, when Congressman Arthur Mitchell (who Democrats supported for his opposition to the NAACP) was elected in Chicago. By 1948, Democrats offered some modest reforms (they outlawed lynching in 1939) and Houston native Barbara Jordan became the first black congresswoman from a southern state in 1973.

Mississippi Burning was NOT about whites who killed blacks – it was about Democrats who murdered civil rights workers trying to implement reforms in 1964 that President Lincoln had secured (and 360,000 Yankees died for) a century earlier. These workers died trying to restore what Democrats sabotaged since 1865 and still undermine today.

Reparations Lawsuit

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing Case No. 05-35890 in which a descendant of slavery is suing the Democratic Party.

The Plaintiff alleges:

Democrats supported Slavery and its expansion into the northern states

Democrats introduced the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act to expand slavery into the northern states

Democrats supported and participated in burning down middle class black communities like those in Rosewood, Florida, Wilmington, North Carolina and the Greenwood District (Black Wallstreet) in Tulsa Oklahoma

Southern Democrats fraudulently took over two million acres of black property according to an investigation by Associated Press

Democrats in an effort to keep blacks in their place used sadistic torture, terror and violence including: lynching, mutilations, murder, decapitations and beating and burning to death countless number of blacks.

Although the Plaintiff only wants an apology, the Democratic Party has hired Attorney Dave Burman to avoid even that. Berman does not dispute the allegations, but wants the complaint dismissed because the Plaintiff has not shown the “concrete and personalized injury” necessary to confer standing.

So with all of this (and much more) information available, why are so many Americans ignorant of our own history? I haven’t found a definitive answer yet, but it seems to coincide with the end of segregation. Democrats have learned that by empowering blacks who are willing to marginalize Republican abolitionists, the Democratic Party learned how to tame Judas Horses like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Maxine Waters to control blacks and large populations of poorly educated American voters.

The Myth of Republican Racism

As I Googled my way around the Internet, I found that most news, government, and university websites offer information on slavery and post-Civil War brutality, but inexplicably ignore or defend the undeniable linkages to Democrats. Many sites describe the Civil War, Jim Crow, Disenfranchisement, and the KKK as if unrelated to the Democratic Party’s effort to control black voters.

The Ku Klux Klan justifies its history as a response to persecution by “Radical Republicans” during Reconstruction, but doesn’t mention Democrats. Republicans were considered radical because, to many Democrats, freeing slaves was as radical an idea as freeing livestock and horses. To most Democrats, freeing slaves was unthinkable.

Northridge University’s Ronald Davis offers a comprehensive timeline of Jim Crow but doesn’t mention Democrats until the White Primary (1944) decision eighty years later. The University of Michigan shows a 98 percent Democratic vote in the Deep South but doesn’t explain how voting was enforced by Jim Crow, Disenfranchisement, and the KKK. George Mason University does the same thing, implying that blacks preferred the Jim Crow party over Republicans who had freed them. The Colombia Encyclopedia states that organizations like the Ku Klux Klan kept “African Americans and white Republicans from voting” but doesn’t mention the Democrats behind it. Like Wikipedia, Long Island University’s History of Slavery does not mention Democrats either. These slave narrative and photo sites make no mention as well.

Children who click on Discovery.com’s US link will learn that Europeans brought slaves to American and the Lincoln freed them. Children are apparently old enough to learn that racism is wrong, but not old enough to know that truth about Democrats. Slaveryinamerica.org offers educational resources, but nothing on Democrats. Duke University offers some books on the subject, but you have to buy them or visit. Emancipated slave Ida Wells wrote that lynching was used to keep blacks out of the political process, but the website that quotes her doesn’t say why.

Despite the historical evidence against the Democratic Party, why are so many Americans so ignorant about their past? Why do so many American voters still support the party of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and lynching?

Rewriting History

The media and university biases that have created and enforced this historical blackout are well documented.

Like most unions, the National Education Association (NEA) extorts millions of dollars from taxpayers through union strikes. Union leaders then draw millions from workers in the form of union dues and direct them back to their pockets and the Democratic Party. The NEA is the fourth largest contributor to the Democratic Party (DNC).

I have described the relationship between teacher unions and the DNC that produce millions of undereducated and indoctrinated graduates and drop-outs HERE, HERE, and HERE. Teachers, like the media and universities, have an incentive not to expose the real history of the Democratic Party – for anyone who understands their history will find parallels between their past and how they control black Americans and laborers today. Why haven’t Americans asked why blacks in cities New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Detroit still suffer after 40 years of almost exclusively Democratic Party leadership? Why do some of these neighborhoods still look like neighborhoods from the Deep South during Jim Crow?

Here are some a number of reasons:

Democrats have co-opted the media, public schools, and unions.

Democrats empower union leaders who control teachers, writers, movie production laborers, actors, electrical workers, and so forth to redirect union dues back to Democrats who empower them

Union teachers and educators write the curriculum taught in public schools, careful not to offend the party that empowers them while marginalizing Republicans

Union actors, set workers, writers, musicians, and others in the media are careful not to alienate their union leadership and the Democratic Party to avoid workplace retaliation.

As a result of these and other forces, Americans are inundated with propaganda and union pressure that not only rewards acquiescence, but also punishes resistance.

This is why so many people don’t believe Democrats lynched blacks, which is part of the reason why I am now a Republican. Democrats continue to prove that those who do not understand history are condemned to repeat it.